What Works in Writing?

[sendgary]

Teaching a child how to write an argumentative essay, a factual narrative, or anything else is hard. Most of us never learn to write well with ease (I'm looking at me). I wonder how to teach writing most effectively, in grade school and beyond.

 

I think SWB, in "The Complete Writer," disagreed with the usual advice to "give the children high-interest assignments and have them write, write, write, and revise, revise, revise."

 

But what other way is there to teach writing? I have just ordered SWB's book, so I will soon see her ideas first-hand, but I wonder what has worked for others, if not write, revise, and repeat. I see that "Imitations in Writing," by Matt Whitling, is a program that involves the student attempting to rewrite a classic piece of writing. That';s different, and it sounds promising--learning by imitation.

 

Well, what has worked for any of you? What methods or programs? What hasn't worked?

 

Thanks,

Gary

[robsiew]

I've been exploring this very thing as my oldest is at the age where I had to make some decisions about the direction our writing instruction would take...

 

I read SWB's book on writing and it was the first thing that has made sense to me (and I have my Master's in education!). I won't go into all her points, but a couple concepts that were new to me were children need to be exposed to excellent literature so they recognize fine writing. Then they progress through stages starting with copywork, dictation, narration and imitation.

 

I chose Classical Writing this year for my oldest. I chose it because it gives a solid foundation in learning the nuts and bolts of the English language. It also uses a writing progression I can understand and hopefully teach! We study grammar pretty intensely. It's not "fun" but I see my ds learning more and more every week about how sentences are put together. One needs to be able to take a sentence apart to understand how to put it back together.

 

Probably the thing that makes the most sense to me (because I experienced it first hand with my own children) is the idea that **most** young children are unable to manage the mechanics of writing as well as coming up with their own material at the same time. Getting what's in their head onto paper is a big deal. My children would cry when I asked them to do any writing on their own before I learned this philosophy. I couldn't understand why they couldn't even write a journal entry about their day!

 

Now I understand that they need to be trained on how to get what is in their head down on the paper. (Something some of us adults take for granted.) Now, my children regularly do copy work, dictation, narration and imitation depending on their age/stage. For the most part they do not complain. My oldest is certainly being stretched by the imitation work he's doing (mostly the amount... he's not big on writing). I guess I have 3 what you may call "reluctant" writers. My 4 y/o however, came out of the womb writing! (What will it be like to teach him to write???:D) The other part of training is not to expect something out of them that they are incapable of giving. (Now I see that it's ridiculous to expect most 1st graders to do an animal research "paper". My ds did this in 1st grade in PS.... he was relating his experience with that to me just today... he said the only way most kids got theirs done (including him) is that the 2 or 3 girls who actually "got it" helped everyone else!)

 

I think writing is a difficult subject no matter how you look at it. It's difficult to learn and (I think) even more difficult to teach, especially if one was really not taught well how to write. I'm interested to see the feedback you get here. Like I said, my entire thinking about writing changed after reading SWB's book...not that she's the "end all" to teaching writing, however nothing else I have tried or learned about has made as much sense as she has.

Edited April 30, 2010 by robsiew

[lea1]

My sons are still little so we have not gotten into this yet but I was very impressed with Andrew Pudewa (director of the Institute for Excellence in Writing and a homeschooling father of seven) at the Midwest Homeschool Conference. He is an awesome speaker and has many of his talks available online pretty inexpensively at his website. He also tends to gear his materials and discussions towards boys to some degree also, as he thinks they tend to be left out when it comes to learning to write. He has a great CD of poems for memorization that are geared towards boys also. I highly recommend checking out his CD's because he sure has a lot of good knowledge about teaching and how to provide correction without damaging the child's excitement for writing. He really knows his stuff. I will re-listen to these CD's many times over the years. If you have an MP3, they are only $3, I believe.

[Caitilin]

What I notice with the middle and high school students I work with in our co-ops is that they often don't know how to outline their ideas very well. I am not a fan of the ultra-formal outline myself, but I do think it's useful, if not essential, to have some kind of written-down reference for where you're going with your ideas. If you don't, it's too easy to get lost, lose focus, repeat yourself, change arguments in mid-essay, fail to prove the point you wish to make, etc.

 

So, in my view, one major component of teaching good writing is teaching to outline, as generally or specifically as you and the student like, so that the framework is there to refer to, (or to change!) as the student lays out his/her argument.

 

I am sure there are many excellent writing programs which can teach this--I know I suffered through Calvert's as a student :tongue_smilie:, but in retrospect, it was among the most valuable writing techniques I learned.

[Jean in Wisc]

It was not the curriculum any more than the process. We found a parts-to-whole approach helpful--learn grammar, learn how to build good sentences, learn sentence combining, learn the paragraph, learn the essay, learn to research, learn the progym...

 

And model it. I wrote a lot of the first papers while my dc gave suggestions--on a white board or together bending over a paper at the table. Little by little, I handed more of the task over to my child until he was writing while I gave suggestions. It was not until the child was doing solid work that I handed him an assignment and walked away.

 

A few weeks ago I had a child hand in a paper, and the sentence structure was...not good. So I had him sit at the computer and asked him to take each sentence and rewrite them into small, short, basic sentences--no complex sentences allowed. Then I asked him to put his sentences together the same way he had done in sentence combining exercises. I looked over his shoulder and made suggestions, but he did the work. The result was unbelievably improved! And now he knows what to do next time he feels his paper has the same problem.

 

I've taken a slightly dyslexic kid through this process--and a child who didn't write an acceptable paragraph until she was in 9th grade (poor 1st child is the guinea pig). It works. The college professors love their papers!

 

Jean

Edited April 30, 2010 by Jean in Wisc